Resupply boxes and calorie counting

First, I want to wish my mom a Happy Mother's Day! Your adventurous spirit, determination, and optimistic attitude is what I model my life after every day. You were the one who taught me to love the mountains and appreciate the wilderness. I think you are amazing and I'm so excited to see you in four weeks!

We arrived in Bakersfield on Wednesday afternoon and we've been keeping very busy! There is not much outdoor activity in Bakersfield--it's fairly flat and hot. The closest mountains are over in Tehachapi Pass about an hours drive away. Instead of playing outside, we've been able to focus on our preparations for the PCT resupply boxes. 

During our 3.5 month trek along the PCT, we'll be continuously restocking the food and fuel in our packs about every 5 days.  There are two main ways to do this.  Most hikers either prepare pre-made food boxes that they ship to post offices or gas stations in the nearest towns to the trail, or buying food at grocery and general stores in those towns.  Since food availability and quality varies quite a bit from town to town, we're planning on doing a mix of the two; we're shipping 8 resupply boxes throughout the hike, then buying the rest of our food at local groceries stores. The longest period we'll have between resupply stops is 8 days (through the High Sierras).  Making the resupply packages ahead of time takes a lot of careful planning.  We need to make sure we have enough food and weighing out precise portions of each item we'll be eating so we don't go hungry, but no so much that we are adding an unbearable amount of weight to our packs.

Since we need to carry multiple days of food at a time, our calorie to weight ratio is extremely important. We tried to pack the most nutrient-dense high-calorie food items that we could; foods like pasta, nuts, peanut butter, and energy bars are a must.  Our plan for dinner has always been to dehydrate our own meals and during his time in grad school, Mike has been working to perfect six different dehydrated meal recipes for us to eat during the trip.  On the dinner menu will be:

1) beef and 3-bean chili

2) meatball and veggie pasta in red sauce

3) Asian stir fry with udon noodles and peanut butter brown sauce

4) chicken and veggie risotto with white gravy

5) tuna and broccoli mac and cheese

6) Katmandu curry

Just because we're gonna be living simply doesn't mean we can't eat like kings, and these meals should be gooooooooooooooooooood!  Since food never leaves your mind on long backpacking trips, having filling, delicious meals to look forward to at the end of the day is crucial for morale and appeases those hungry hiker daydreams.

The full contents of one resupply box look something like this

 and consist of:

	Calories per day
	Mike	Erin
Two packs of instant oatmeal	300	300
Pepperoni and salami slices	200	0
Home made beef jerky	100	100
Cocoa for hot chocolate	140	140
Stinger honey energy gel	120	120
Justin's individual peanut butter packets	190	190
Energy bars: Cliff, Kind, Luna, Mojo	240	200
Trader Joe's dried fruit: flattened banana, mango, pineapple, apple, oranges	100	100
Almonds variety	380	190
Gatorade instant powder drink mix	75	75
Home made dehydrated dinner	700	500
Candy Bar: Milky Way, Snickers	240	200
Total	2785	2115

Other items in our resupply boxes include maps & Yogi's guidebook pages for the next section of trail, fuel canisters, toilet paper, and extra ziplock bags. Mike's dad will be mailing us the boxes two weeks before our estimated arrival at each location. Extra items such as batteries, clean socks & underwear, and new shirts will be thrown in to the boxes as needed.

Since our resupply boxes are mostly completed, we decided to take a little break from planning and toured the Pacific coast today with Mike's dad. We drove 2.5 hours west and headed for the Hearst Castle, which is a famous and ridiculously opulent estate built in the early 1900's on the top of a hill overlooking the ocean by one of the first American media moguls.  The Castle is ENORMOUS and filled with lavishly over the top architecture and art pieces that were collected by some one that had more money than they knew how to spend, but it's worth a visit. We took the grand rooms tour, which was a 40-minute walk-thru of the gathering room, the dinning hall, the breakfast room, the billiards room, and the theater, which was just the tip of the iceberg of the estate.

The architecture of the Hearst Castle was very elaborate. California State Parks took the responsibility to preserve and restore the castle. There were several rooms undergoing restoration projects. The large outdoor swimming pool was also emptied and undergoing renovations.

After we were done at the Hearst Castle, we drove south along Highway 1 to see an elephant seal viewing area. We found hundreds of seals just 50 feet away from the highway laying on the beach and soaking up the sun. They were entertaining to watch but the high winds caused us to retreat back to the car and head to lunch.

We continued driving south to Pismo Beach where we grabbed an excellent seafood lunch and then finished the trip with a walk along the beach. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday in California! I'm glad we were able to spend some time with Mike's dad and see the Pacific Ocean before heading east to Utah.

We'll be staying in Bakersfield for the next few days preparing for the canyoneering trip to Zion. The current plan is to spend ten days in Zion, starting on Tuesday, and taking down 7 awesome canyons with some friends that will be visiting us in the park.  We can't wait to get back to the Utah desert where Mike and I had some of our first adventures together as a couple just over two years ago now!